Enoch Was Right

Yet another martyr falls. A lot has been made about Nigel Hastilow, ex-Tory Wolverhampton candidate's words about immigration. Peter Hain, said it exposed the "racist underbelly" of the Conservative Party, which calls into question whether he actually believes the remarks to be "racist", or whether he's just scoring cheap points with the ethnic community.

So, what did he actually say that was so bad?

"When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most say immigration.

"Many insist: 'Enoch Powell was right'. Enoch, once MP for Wolverhampton South-West, was sacked from the Conservative front bench and marginalised politically for his 1968 'rivers of blood' speech, warning that uncontrolled immigration would change our country irrevocably. He was right. It has changed dramatically."

He also wrote: "They have more or less given up complaining about the way we roll out the red carpet for foreigners while leaving the locals to fend for themselves."

Britain has changed dramatically. Even a Labour minister had admitted that it is quite unfair that foreigners are put at the front of housing waiting list. Are the political class, then, inherently stupid? Are they completely detatched from reality? Are they so totally removed from the real world and real people that they lost all traces of common sense?

Well, yes. But then, anyone who mentions the name of Enoch Powell and doesn't say "bastard" afterwards is generally condemned to death anyway. Again, however, if you look at the offending words, you will find some strikingly modern themes, namely the fear of a prejudice against the white Briton in favour of the immigrants and/or their descendents, of entire towns and cities becoming devoid of the indigenous people, of political correctness (ironically), and of violence, of the rivers "foaming with much blood".

So, Enoch was right, then.

We've been getting a bit optimistic, recently, with both Cameron and Warsi admitting that many supporters of the BNP had reasonable "grievances", and that there was a real problem with uncontrolled immigration. However, the Tory leadership's reaction to this does raise eyebrows. It says something about the maturity of the political class in this country that you are still unable to discuss immigration sensibly without accusations of racism being thrown at you as though you were being publicly stoned. We have a way to go yet. Perhaps too long a way to go.